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Hell – Do You Know What the Hell It Is?


The Valley of Hinnom, a place-name often translated as "Hell" in the New Testament.


"Hell" is the stuff of nightmares: burning in sulfur, pitchforks and demons, the whole "eternal damnation" deal. However, such symbology is conspicuously absent from actual reference in the original text - except the "lake of fire", which I'll touch on briefly.

Three words have been translated as "Hell" in most English Bibles - Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus - all of which are specific theological constructs rather than euphuisms for a Satan-run prison-house.

Now, to get down to the nitty-gritty: what were Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus, respectively?

Hades
Hades is a lovely Greek word meaning roughly “hidden,” as in the “hidden world,” or “the world of spirits.” In Greek thought, it meant the underworld – no, not burning and eternal damnation. It was where all people went when they died – the good, the bad, and even the ugly (woah, Polyphemus! Back into the cave!)

Theoi.com, a wellspring of information on Greek thought and myth, has this to say in regards to Hades:



A truly dismal place indeed. However, it is a necessary construction by those trying to figure out where our souls go once we die. The notion that the good people immediately (and note the use of “immediately”) go to heaven and the bad go immediately to hell is rather new. The Hebrews, those good ol’ writers of the Old Testament, had the very same idea, and called it Sheol. The Norse named their overall afterlife Hel, where we got the modern term. All of these, interestingly enough, mean “hidden.”

The Christians didn’t just ignore this idea and come up with a whole new idea about the afterlife, mind you. Josephus, a Jewish scholar of the 1st century (that’s around the time of Christ, for those of you who aren’t into the whole calendar thing) recorded the Christian notion of the afterlife:



Amazingly enough, Josephus actually refers to a part of Hades where the righteous are rewarded! This is called by Josephus the “Bosom of Abraham,” a term referred to by Christ (Luke 16:22-23). Granted, the word translated as “Hell” in verse 23 is Hades, Abraham’s Bosom is set off from the rest of Hades.

But wait – didn’t Christ say something about burning in a lake of fire or something? This is the second term to discuss – Gehenna, or the “lake of fire and brimstone.”

Gehenna
First things first – where did the word Gehenna come from, anyway? The word itself is a compound word pulled from Hebrew into Greek which means “The Valley of the Son of Hinnom.” This particular valley is on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, and was famous for being used in the past first as a trash heap where garbage was burnt, and later as an altar to sacrifice babies to the false god Molech.

You heard me. Baby sacrifices. To a heathen god. No wonder these people get the burnination.



Gehenna was by far the term that Christ himself used. Of the eleven times Christ used Gehenna, every single one of them referred to complete and utter destruction, and only this term was ever used to describe “the lake of fire.” It should be, because this is the only use of “Hell” which has anything to do with fire!

However, who is eligible to go to Gehenna? Certainly, a large amount of who are classically labeled as “wicked” will be thrust into Gehenna; but we also must acknowledge that Gehenna is not always a permanent state of being. The Jewish Encyclopedia has an excellent description of people who are very likely to enter into the lake of fire:



A good summary is this: those who violate basic personal and property rights (murder, robbery, theft), who violate contracts (adulterers, oath-breakers), or who misrepresent the truth (scam artists, habitual liars, hypocrites) are pretty much guaranteed a spot in the hot seat. However, not all sins are punished equally, and war criminals are likely to spend a very long time thinking about their own human frailties. So, think of it as a cosmic time-out box, with different punishments for different crimes.

But wait a second – where’s this Satan character fit into this thing? I thought he was supposed to be in charge of the whole operation, wasn’t he? Oh, but there’s still one more concept to touch on – Tartarus.

Tartarus
So, starting off with the definition once again: what is Tartarus? Well, it’s a Greek term for a part of the underworld. In Greek thought, it equaled roughly Gehenna, as described about. Quoting Theoi.com once more,



Now, here we have an interesting connotation to explore: “the truly unredeemable, [experiencing] eternal damnation.” Doesn’t that sound familiar? Yet, it’s the same place – only with two different levels of punishment!

The first point to note in relating this to Christianity is that Tartarus is only referred to explicitly once in the texts – by Peter, in describing the location of “sinning angels” (sound like Satan, anyone?)



Now, the notion that Tartarus is a place to hold prisoners until judgment is a well-established thought, and is found also in the phrase “Gehenna.” However, as Peter was writing primarily to Gentiles, they were unlikely to know about a particular phrase referring to a trash-heap in Jerusalem, so he used the generic Greek phrase Tartarus.

But what of the ultimate destiny of the people in Gehenna/Tartarus? Of that we can read in the book of Revelation (if we may for a moment again humor the scriptures):



Ultimately, those who remain in Gehenna/Tartarus at the judgment – namely, those who were too sinful to escape from the lake of fire in a reasonable timeframe – are doomed to wallow in their sins forever.

The Greeks imagined some pretty good examples: men who chopped up their own children and served them to guests, serial rapists, and so forth. Christians envisioned Satan, the father of lies and of all sin, as ending up there. If I may be so presumptuous as to judge one’s righteousness, I would reckon that Hitler has little chance of escaping this second death.

Sadistic bastards get a sadistic b*****d’s punishment. For wholly selling their humanity for the pride of the world, they receive what little of the world is left: death and destruction.

Conclusion
The ancients had a much better grasp of these things than we do. The system as originally envisioned by Christ and others allowed for justice to be pursued, without needlessly condemning those who commit finite sins to an infinite purpose. Remember, folks, although the flame and its consequences may be everlasting, the duration of punishment is not.

Go to hell? Sure, but I’m taking you to Hades with me.

Exactly we cannot know who will go to heaven or hell and it is not our place to judge others. Also the afterlife is not my focus, my focus is to follow the Law of Agape (Matthew 22:36-40)

I follow the Law of Agape because I am called to follow it, not because there is a reward of an afterlife if there is one. I believe there is an afterlife but I do not know. What is in the afterlife, I do not know, but personally if I were to focus on the afterlife, it would distract me from knowing and sharing God's love here.